Able to work anywhere we have a tortured relationship with the office today. Desperate to work again in physically shared spaces, we are also now questioning whether offices are needed at all. Offices themselves labour under intolerable forces too: 21st-century building regulations suggest redesigning them every seven-to-ten years, managerial strategies shift every five years, and employees cycle every two. As a result, offices are renewed with alarming frequency. With the future of our workspaces so uncertain, Back to the Office works overtime inside the revolutionary offices of the 20th century, and asks what endured from their architecture, their materials, and the work ideologies they embodied.
